Whistleblower Chelsea Manning walks free from prison

Chelsea Manning walked free on Wednesday at the military prison in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The 29-year-old former army private was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in 2013. She had been in custody since being arrested in May 2010. A US military court convicted her under the outdated Espionage Act of 1917 – she was found guilty on 17 of the 22 charges brought against her. Manning was acquitted of the aiding the enemy charge, however, for which she may have faced the death penalty. Inhuman treatment as a pretrial detainee She reportedly tried to commit suicide and went on hunger strikes in prison. She was required to serve her sentence in an all-male detention facility and not allowed to wear a feminine-style haircut. Over a period of 11 months during her three-year detention prior to her conviction, Manning was kept locked up alone in a tiny cell over 23 hours a day. In 2012, Juan Mendez, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, filed a report in which he concluded that the treatment was cruel and inhuman. The Department of Defense has repeatedly declined to comment on Manning’s treatment in prison. Embarrassing leaks A former intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was convicted in 2013 of leaking over 700,000 secret military and State Department documents and battlefield videos. The episode was one of the most embarrassing leaks of classified information in US history. Three days before leaving office in January, then-president Barack Obama’s slashed Manning’s sentence by 28 years after more… [Read full story]